Pack One Bag is brought to you by Harny & Sons Fine Tees. Harny & Sons has an international reputation for sourcing the best ingredients because they understand that for many folks, tea is a daily ritual. It's a grounding part of life, and you can really taste the quality of their ingredients in every cup. First thing in the morning, I love making one of Harny & Sons' looseleaf Japanese green teas. But if you like any tea, you got to try Harny & Sons. Visit harny. Com and use code pack one bag for 10% off your order. That's h-a-r-n-e-y. Com and code pack one bag for 10% off. Lemonada. Previously on Pack One Bag. The 1985 Prize for economics went to the Italian-born, naturalized American, Franco Modigliani. I heard this story the first day I met you.

Before we leave, I let him kiss me.

It is like kissing the sunset itself.

Three months later, I get a package from Rome, 91 Little Letters.

When your grandmother, Serena, passed away, I found a quite remarkable archive. Some of these boxes I literally had not opened ever.

Let's see. My dad and I have been digging through those 19 boxes for a couple of days when it happens. Just as we're getting a fuller picture of my family's story, we open a new box.

This is box 9.

It reframes everything. It's a box dedicated to Nonna Serena's father, my great grandfather, or bisnonno, Julio Calabi. Bisnonno Giulio was known as Il rey de Libri, the king of the books, because he ran the biggest book distribution business in Italy. I'm excited to dig in because Nonna Serena talked about him a lot. She always said, My father led us out of Italy just in the nick of time. So here, this is good.

These are definitely original documents of some kind. Let's see what we have.

I'm flipping through Giulio's personal documents, and I pull out a letter written on formal-looking paper that literally really makes me sit down. The author seems so impossible that at first, I can't believe it.

No, it's signed by Mussolini. It's signed directly, Benito Mussolini.

It says vostro. Yours. This is a letter from Benito Mussolini.

That's what I understand.

To your grandfather.

Correct.

Why was my great grandfather exchanging letters with the future dictator of Italy? I mean, this is the exact guy who would eventually force them to flee the country.

This is on Mussolini's letter had dated September 10th, 1915.

What was going on between these guys, and how did it all go so horribly wrong? My name is David Modigliani, and this is Pack One Bag, the story of my Italian Jewish family split apart by war. My quest to understand, if fascism takes over your country, do you stay or do you try to flee? What happens if you can't? This is episode 2, Mussolini's friend. My nonna Serena was a documentarian at heart. She dedicated a lot of her life to archiving our family's history. And along the way, she asked her father, bisnonno Giulio, a lot of questions to make sure she had it all straight. She told me she always wish she had recorded those conversations, like I wish I'd recorded her before she died.

Okay, I put the machine next to you and I can sit here.

So we're going to use Nonna Serena's stories and all the documents we found in her father's box to recreate those conversations. Okay.

Serena Calabi Modigliani, interview with papá, October 10, 1951.

Whenever Nonna Serena talked about her father, he always seemed like some character out of a movie, this debonair Italian media magnate, the cultured hero who someone like Stanley Tucci might bring to life.

. Aspetta, papá, in inglese, in English, please.

.

I don't forget Italian. It's because this tape would be for your grandchildren. Okay.

I can try.

Let's start with how you met mamma.

But let's open that window, Serena. Apra, please. I start to sweat when Mom is baking. We don't complain because the results... But my God, she could make a pottery in that open right now.

Okay, Papa, come Come on, about meeting mom, you were getting a bit old already.

No.

See, your mother, Papa, your own mother, told me that she was crying when you were in your 20s because you were always involved with these singers and actresses.

Look, I won't dispute that I may have had some dalliances in my most vigorous ears, but I knew Mama from when we were teenagers, and I loved her already from a distance. I adored her, veramente.

When this crush of his, Dina Vita, got a marriage proposal from another guy, Julio was finally shocked into action. He won bisnonna Dina's heart, and in 1913, they got married instead.

With the money from Mama's Daury, we started a small stationery store.

And this stationery store they started together would eventually connect Giulio with Benito Mussolini. We're not going to dive too deep into Italian history here, but it's helpful to understand this one thing. For more than a thousand years, the Catholic Church controlled Rome and huge parts of what is now Italy. But in 1870, about 13 years before both Giulio and Benito were born, the Army of the Kingdom of Italy completed the 30-year process of unifying the country. They took control away from the church, and the Jews of Italy, who had been stripped of their civil rights and restricted in gh for the previous 300 years, they were released. They became full members of Italian society. So when Giulio and Dina started that station ordinary store as newlyweds, they were Jews blossoming into a world of fresh opportunities. At the store, they started selling French books and magazines, which they imported from a French company, Ashet. And from Ashet's shipments, they got some big ideas.

I saw Messageri Hachet was a massive distributor. We had nothing like that in Italy yet that could deliver books, newspapers, magazines, all across the country.

Julio and Dina started dreaming of building an Italian version of Aschette.

We had to think big from the start. Big. And I repeat to myself every night. Big, big, big. Because that was the only way we could succeed.

Within a year, Giulio had founded a new company, Le Messagerie Italiane. With Dina as the bookkeeper, they'd built out the infrastructure to support it.

Very quickly, we had the trucks and the drivers and the systems to distribute a daily newspaper.

Here is where our two guys enter the same orbit. Because before he transitioned to a fascist dictator, Mussolini was a newspaper editor. His first calling was actually as a lefty journalist. That's where he learned how to persuade the public.

Mussolini was a journalist, and he was a good journalist, too.

Mauro Canali is one of Italy's foremost scholars on fascism, and he told me that newspapers were the soil where Mussolini planted his roots.

. He has a direct language. He has an ability to say things concisely and understandably to people.

It's a style Mussolini would use later in speeches in the streets of Milan, whipping the crowd into a frenzy by telling them that they were the protagonists of history.. By the time Giulio starts his distribution business, Mussolini has become editor-in-chief of Avanti, the biggest socialist newspaper in Italy. So young Benito and Giulio are both starting to feel the power that comes with spreading information to the masses. But then Mussolini hits a bump. In 1914, World War I breaks out across Europe. At first, Italy stays out of the war, and Italian Socialists like it that way. But Mussolini starts to feel some FOMO. To him, the war is an opportunity to thrust Italy, and maybe even himself, into the international spotlight, a chance for the socialist revolution to catch fire. And so in a meeting with socialist party leaders, he admits he's against their party line.

He says, I am for intervention in the war. He says, We may not be the ones who have wanted it, but by now it has already exploded. How can we stay neutral here?

And the socialist leaders, they decide to expel young Benito from the party, which forces him to resign from the party newspaper. So cast out, unemployed, 31 years old, Mussolini decides to double down. He basically says, Okay, then. I'll start my own newspaper. But he has a little problem. He has no idea how to start a newspaper. Here is where Mussolini and Bisnonno Giulio collide. More of Pack One Bag after the break. This show is brought to you by Betterhelp. Hey, listeners, I'd love to chat for a minute about the importance of stepping back and reflecting every now and again. Taking a moment to look at our year so far, what we've accomplished, what we've still got ahead of us, is the perfect way to make sure you're on track with all your goals. A good therapist is there as your guide on that path, helping you figure out your next move and making you feel supported along the way. I certainly have benefited from therapy over the years. I found that talking out how I'm feeling and making plans for action can make a huge difference in my quality of life. If you've ever considered therapy or are thinking about returning, better help makes it more accessible than ever.

Their service is entirely online, so it offers flexibility and convenience to fit your busy schedule. Simply complete a short questionnaire and Betterhelp will connect you with a licensed therapist suited to your needs. If you ever feel the need to switch therapists, you can do that easily at no extra cost. Take a moment. Visit betterhelp. Com/packonebag today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P. Com/packonebag. Every morning when I get up, I put in ear buds, I turn on my electric kettle, and start listening to a good podcast while I make a pot of tea. Right now, it's all Harnian sons. I love their looseleaf Japanese tea, so I rotate between Gyo-Kuro Censha, Organic Censha, and their Soba Macha, which is so good. There's a depth of flavor to them that I haven't tasted since I was in Japan. But Harnian Suns caters to every palate, so you might like something else, like Earl Gray Supreme or orange pico or Organic Passion Plum. Now that it's summer, I usually have one of their ice tea blends going, too, which are delicious. But I'll tell you this, whatever flavor you choose, you'll definitely enjoy their packaging.

These beautiful tins don't just keep the tea fresh, but they also make really good gifts. So I'd invite you to check out some of this amazing tea. Visit harny. Com and use code pack one bag for 10% off your order. That's harney. Com. Com and code pack one bag for 10% off. Back in Boston with the family boxes, my dad and I dug dug into the correspondence between Giulio and Benito. When Mussolini decides to start his own newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, he needs it to be physically distributed across Italy. Giulio has just built up the infrastructure of his distribution company, La Messageria Italiana, and he's ready for the job. But first, Benito has to actually launch the paper.

The letter is essentially discussing one of the very first editions of the newspaper and how that got born.

Desperate to get the paper up and running, Mussolini and his co founder have turned to My bisnonno Giulio for help, and they report here that they've taken all of his advice.

As per your instructions, the salary is the maximum that you told me, and the clerk is a very good young- They thank Giulio profusely, calling him Mussolini's friend.

But there's something else going on in this letter, not just gratitude, but also great deference to Julio, like he's somehow their boss. Julio's power is even more clear in another letter when Mussolini gets upset.

I do not think I hide from you a certain and unwelcome surprise provoked by the limitations you announced to me.

Benito is complaining about financial limits that Julio's setting.

Limitations that are out of place.

If Julio is just distributing Mussolini's paper and giving him advice, why does he have so much power in this relationship. Well, to run this startup paper, Benito doesn't just need advice. He needs money. And as Mauro Canali told me, some of that money is coming to him from outside of Italy.

France was coming to help him.

France is already fighting in World War I. The war Benito has been so eager for Italy to enter, and the French government is desperate for Italy to do just that, to join them in the war as an ally. As Giulio put it, I had a lot of contact with my business partners in Paris during this time, and it became clear that Mussolini and this newspaper could be useful to them. If Mussolini is going to use his newspaper to persuade Italians that Italy should join the war, the French want him to succeed. They're happy to contribute money, but they need someone who can funnel the money to Mussolini, an Italian who travels back and forth between Paris and Italy for business. A trusted person who'd benefit from France's success in the war, a person like my bisnonno Giulio.

I did not just distribute Mussolini's words, unfortunately. I was also the courier for a secret subsidy from Paris to support his newspaper.

What we, historians, call the Frenchman's Gold.

Bisnonno Giulio was funneling this Frenchman's gold to Benito in his newspaper. And after the mad dash to get Il Popolo d'Italia up and running, the paper helped to accomplish Benito's goal. In May of 1915, Italy did get into World War I, and it did ally itself with France, just like those French funders had hoped. Benito and Giulio would both see that war up close as Italian soldiers, but their experiences would send them in opposite directions.

Of course, I wish I had seen it coming soon. Even after one year, by the time he was making mistakes with that paper and acting like a storm, so it was already clear he could not be trusted in a real way. And I began to take my distance. But I will say this, Serena, you should be grateful. You should be grateful I got a closer look. It was essential, the knowledge that gave me about his character. Because later, when I had to choose what to do, it was our lives, and they were on the line. Agubito, our lives.

Even if Bisnando Giulio learned some things that my family survive, his whole experience with Mussolini still leaves me with some uncomfortable questions. Would Mussolini have gotten his newspaper going without Giulio's help? Possibly. If the paper had failed, would Mussolini have found a different path to power? Probably. But Giulio's work launching Il Popolo d'Italia shows how small personal choices can lead to big moments in history because Mussolini used that newspaper to vault himself from a guy who'd been kicked out of his own political party all the way to the prime ministership of Italy. When he was drafted into the Italian Army for World War I, Mussolini used his paper to publish a diary from the front and build his brand as a courageous tough guy. By 1919, in the aftermath of World War I, his editorials in the paper had built a loyal following of angry young men. A lot of them were traumatized and unemployed veterans of the war. In a country that had become disorganized, Mussolini sensed a desire for discipline, for hard-nosed law and order. So he transformed his group of followers into a full-blown political organization, and he steered hard toward the opening he saw on the political right.

I remember my Nonny talking through what happened next. By 1921, the politics in Italy were getting more and more wild and chaotic.

Just like Nonno's hair today. At At least I have it. And Mussolini's new party. The fascist Party, they won a small number of seats in the parliament, but democracy was too slow for that thug.

So he just decided to take what he wanted. In October of to Mussolini orchestrated a national insurrection. In cities and towns across the country, fascist squads broke into government buildings, and roughly 30,000 of them marched on the Capitol. The king was weak, and he was too worried about his own political capital to back the current Prime Minister, so he rolled over and invited Mussolini to form a new government. Eight years after being an out-of-work newspaper editor, Benito Mussolini became the Prime Minister of Italy. But Benito was in a delicate spot. Technically, his party was in power, but practically, they didn't have enough seats in parliament to get anything done.

He understands that it is a precarious power, and he has to somehow resolve this issue.

Mussolini made a new law, a electoral turbo booster. Whichever party won the most votes would now have the right to fill two thirds of the seats in Parliament, the power to control the chamber. Bisonno Giulio was watching the moves his former pen pal was making.

It made it seem like a small change. But after he changed these rules, he dissolved the parliament.

He dissolved parliament to have new elections. And in every town and city, when the first voters came out of the booths, no matter who they'd actually voted for-Fascist guns beat them and screamed at them for voting against Mussolini. A bloody warning to everyone else who was about to vote.

This was their preferred method of communication, violence. And so who do you think won the majority?

And because of Mussolini's new law, control of government, too.

Now, he really had the keys to the car.

But when Benito's new fascist parliament convened for the first time, someone stood up to protest all of Mussolini's fraud and violence. It was the leader of the opposition, a thin, handsome man in a three-piece suit named Giacomo Matteotti. Mussolini was worried about this guy, Matteotti, and with good reason. Benito had risen to power in part by promising to clean up the corruption in Italian government, the 1920s equivalent of draining the swamp. But this political opponent, Matteotti, it turns out he was planning to reveal that Mussolini was actually a hypocrite. Matteotti had proof that Mussolini had accepted a bribe. In exchange for In granting Italian oil rights to an American company, Benito had received about $1.5 million in today's money. And this bribe he'd taken, it was made as a contribution to a certain Italian newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia.

Il Popolo d'Italia was the personal property of the Mussolini's. It was their family cash box.

Yes, Mussolini was laundering bribes for oil rights through the same newspaper newspaper, my bisnondo Giulio had helped him start 10 years earlier. So what was going to happen when this bribe Mussolini had accepted came to light on the floor of Parliament like Matteotti was planning? Unfortunately, we'll never know. On June 11th, 1924, a warm day in the heart of Rome, a thin man is walking alongside the banks of the Tiber River, swinging his briefcase. It's Giacomo Matteotti, that opponent of Mussolini's, with plans to reveal his corruption. At about 4:00 in the afternoon, a car swerves out of traffic and pulls up next to him. The doors burst open and several men jump out. Matteotti recognizes them as members of Mussolini's private security force. As they grab him and shove him into the car, notes from his briefcase fly into the air. One of the men dashes around the street, grabbing every scrap of paper before diving back into the car as it peels out. Soon, Romans at sidewalk cafés, finishing their after lunch coffees, hear a driver leaning on the horn without stopping. They look up to see a car speeding through the city. Later, they'll realize this blaring horn from the car is to muffle the screams of the man inside.

As he tries to escape, Giacomo Matteotti is being stabbed to death with a carpenter's file. For the At the moment, Mussolini had kept his corruption under wraps, but this murder would create a different crisis for Benito, and a fork in the road for Bisnonno Giulio. That's after the break. For this show, I really wanted to ask my Italian relatives questions in their own language. That's why I use the most trusted language learning program out there, Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone has made a language super accessible. I can use it on my phone or on my desktop, so it really immerses you in whatever language you want to learn. The Rosetta Stone team are trusted experts who've been doing this for 30 years with millions of users. They offer 25 different languages. They specialize in helping you learn a language quickly with no English translation, so you really learn to speak, listen, and think in that language. Plus, their built-in true accent feature gives you feedback on your pronunciation, which is super helpful when my dad isn't around. You can get yourself a lifetime membership, which has all 25 languages. So you're covered for any trips and language needs throughout your whole life.

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I was shocked about Matteotti, really. There had been the violence, yes, many ugly things, but to kill the leader of the opposition, no. I said to Mama, If Mussolini continue down this path, there is no future for in this country, and I begin to make plans.

When Matteotti was killed in 1924, Mussolini wasn't really a dictator yet. He was the Prime Minister of a Violent Democracy. But Giulio had personal experience with Benito and a sense of how far things might go.

We start to move money out of the country, quietly, to an account we had opened in Switzerland.

Carrying stacks of cash and bonds, they pack their bags for a little vacation across the border.

A nice weekend, a little trip to the bunker before we left on a Monday to come back to Italy.

By the time Bisnondo Giulio started moving money out, he had a lot to lose. When World War I ended, Mussolini had returned with a dark, socialist vision for Italy, monoculture through force. Giulio came back from the war with a different vision, all about international cooperation and the free flow of information. It was a vision he'd come to with a new friend who was the polar opposite of Mussolini. This new friend would become a big figure in Italian media, just like Giulio, and his key confidante for decades. His name was Angelo Fortunato Formigini. He was a fellow Jew with a twirly mustache and a twinkle in his eye.

My friend Formigini and I came back from the war with the sense that stronger bonds between the countries might prevent more war. Formigini decided that laughter was the most universal human experience.

So Formigini started his own publishing house focused on printing comedies, which Giulio's company distributed. Giulio's angle was a little more direct. He thought that if people read more from other cultures, they'd be less likely to kill each other. So after the war, his company came out with a massive new international catalog.

The Catalog of Catalogs, we called it.

It gave Italian booksellers the information to order almost any publication in Europe. As the books and magazines flowed in, Giulio's company handled the shipping and logistics. It was a seismic shift in the indexing and distribution of media, a little bit like Amazon before its time. The company became so successful, so fast that two years later, when he was just 36 years old, Julio got Honorary Nighthood from the king of Italy, the same green sach that Nonno Franco would eventually win 65 years later and wear to his Nobel ceremony. That's why Nonna was not so impressed, by the way.

I think whomever I married was going to win big awards.

We will never really know that. You want me to prove it?

I still have time to make another husband famous.

But Julio was just getting started. After And by partnering on a chain of retail bookstores, his company started selling directly to readers, too, and he earned his new nickname, the King of the Books. As Julio's fortunes grew, the Italian king gave him an honor even higher than nighthood, o Comendatore, or Commander of the Crown of Italy. Despite the growing fascism, these were good times for Julio and his family. On a hill looking over Bologna, just down the street from his in-laws, Julio built a palatial modern villa with an imperial double staircase.

See, I always use the stairs to escape from Paulo when he was chasing me.

Both of you are racing like a maniac down the stairs and then bang, out the back door, into the garden, always making trouble back there with the dogs.

So that's where my bisnonno Giulio, the honorary commander, the king of the books, stood in 1924, that bloody summer of Mateo Gaiotti's murder, chauffeared between his new villa and his bustling office with an empire underway and everything to lose. But even if he started smuggling money out of the country before most Italians even thought of leaving, Giulia wasn't the only person shocked by the murder. The entire country started reeling. When the fascist government began to obstruct justice and avoid responsibility for Matteotti's murder, 130 members of the opposition walked out of parliament. Instead of meeting violence with violence, they hoped to prick the conscience of the country. And when investigators discovered Matteotti's bloody jacket and his dead body, the country began to boil over. Italians said Mussolini had gone too far. Benito's support was in freefall, and he went into a deep depression. Depression. Only an unlikely friend could help dig him out.

It was the Pope, the Catholic Church who saved him after Matteotti, was incredible to see because when I met Mussolini, he detested the priests, despised the church.

The separation of church and state had been a cornerstone of Italy's modern Republic. It brought Jews like Giulio into mainstream society. But when Mussolini he first became Prime Minister.

He had a religious transformation. And suddenly, he saw delight.

And he began to reunite church and state.

He put Catholic teaching back into every public school, which I did not have, thanks to God. He put crucifixes back on the walls in every public place, the classrooms, the hospitals, the courtrooms, everywhere. Everywhere. Everything back to how it was before he was born.

And this Pope, Pope Pius XI, saw more gains coming, expanding the church's power and acting super conservative policies. So after the murder, even when Mussolini became very controversial, Pope Pius propped him up. Publikely, the Pope backed him through the church's huge media outlets. And privately, he pushed Benito to buck up and take the situation head-on, which is exactly what Mussolini did.

The most fantastic, horrifying lies have been stated in all the newspapers.

On January 3, 1925, about six months after Matteotti's murder, Mussolini addressed Parliament in a historic speech. He denied that he would ever order such an obvious, stupid attack. Then he painted himself and the fascists as the real victims here. Hundreds of them were still locked up in prison, he said, and a poor fascist had been murdered to avenge Matteotti's death. He insisted it was the other side that was breaking all the norms, that the opposition's walk out from Parliament was-an unconstitutional and clearly revolutionary secession. If fascism has been nothing but empty violence, he said, then blame me. But basically, we're making Italy great again. So in that sense-I declare before all of Italy that I alone assume responsibility for everything that has happened. And he made it clear that he and his goons were ready for more violence.

Italy wants peace and quiet and to get on with its work. If possible, we shall provide that with love. But if necessary, by force.

After this speech, the changes came fast and hard. With Parliament half empty, Mussolini consolidated power for the fascists. They had decided that the politicians who'd walked out had permanently forfeited their seats. Mussolini put lots of them in jail on remote islands. Then, he literally banned their political parties.

From that moment, no other party could exist. Only the fascist party existed. We, from that moment, can say that the fascist regime is a one-party regime, an absolutist regime.

That included suppressing all the antifascist newspapers, which Julio watched closely.

He brought all the journalism, the press, under control of the state.

Mussolini even wanted to control what citizens could think and say. So he created a Bureau of Political Police.

He had a network of informants who reported to him.

And it was only a matter of time before these new informants turned their attention to Bisnonno Julio.

At first, Julio noticed that it was taking longer than usual to get his mail.

You could see the mail had been opened. To be read by the fascist sensors.

And then in late November of 1928, the fascist authorities in Bologna simply took Giulio's passport.

Confiscated. Arrived, Elchi. Also, mamas, they took away.

Giulio had once used his passport to travel back and forth from Paris to bring Benito Mussolini the money he desperately needed to launch his newspaper. Now, 14 years later, things had come full circle. Mussolini's regime was preventing Giulio from traveling anywhere.

Was a shock for us. Problem for the company, not a happy day.

But did they give you a reason?

They believed I was infido..

But to mama? No, the coca.

Thanks to God. To fascism, unfaithful to the fascist party. Their theory was, at home, I was a good boy. But in Paris, on my business trips, I was showing hostile feelings about the regime.

They also accused Julio of importing antifascist press into the country.

But was it antifascist?

Anything not in a capital letters, Mussolini is right about everything, was now antifascist. So what can I say?

So what did you do?

What I had to do, Serena, play like a perfect soldier, kiss up to the prefetto of Bologna, promising my total zeal for fascism, and of course, to make sure no one wrote to me stupid things in the mail. Always a problem with Formigiani. And I also I took care over things. I capito. And in three months, the passports were released back to us. Thanks God.

But the message from the regime had been delivered. Stay in line. Conform. We're watching you. Julio's relationship with Mussolini had gone fully through the looking glass now, and the confiscation of his passport gave him two paths forward. On one hand, it was direct motivation to get out of Italy while he still could. On the other, it was an obvious reason to stop doing anything that could risk more serious punishment, like getting exiled to a remote island or worse. In a way, Giulio and Dina hedged their bets. They didn't flee then, but they didn't stop taking risks either. They kept moving money quietly across the border while they expanded their business empire at home. Through 10 more years of fascism, they walked a precarious line, teaching Nonna Serena and her brother to think independently without getting them in trouble, working their angles to grow their company without compromising their dignity. And all along, they kept doubling down on their secret backup plan to flee. And Julio told Nonna Serena a story that shows just how risky it got.

Allora, as the things were getting worse, with the regime, became more difficult to move the money. By 38, they were now calling it a war crime, but it had to be done in case we had to flee. The very last time we were moving money this way, the night before we left. Mama said, I have a feeling. Let me carry the money this time. They were slips of paper, bonds, and other things. For me, this was absolutamente no. To bring her in danger like that, no. But when mama is when she puts the forehead like that, it's difficult to win. She showed me where she had the son into her the corset, a small pocket for the bonds. So the next day, we are riding on the train to Switzerland. And just north of Milano, it stop very abrupt in an empty field. The The police come into the train car from both sides like a flood. They start yelling,. Men to this side of the train, women to this side. They grab me and they push me down the stairs, out into the field. Mama, mama, was reaching for me. But they were taking her out the other way with the women to the other side of the train.

Then they put us in a line and they tell us, take off your coats, open your pockets. And I'm looking across, trying to see Mama because I am terrified. They are doing this to her. But I can only see the feet. And then a policeman grabs my suit, rip open the inside, the lining. Next to me, they drag away a man who starts screaming, Why are you doing this?.

I am not a dear to Jew.

The police then tells me now to drop also my trousers. And when I bend down, I fall forward onto him a little bit, and he hits me in the face. But I just have to stay quiet. I'm just trying to show I have nothing to hide, but inside my head is screaming out for Mama, imagining all of the things that are happening to her, wondering, I mean, really wondering if I will ever see her again. And the police, of course, finds nothing in my clothes, and then finally points to me to go back to the train. I tried to walk slowly up. When I get inside, I run in my face up to the window on the other side to see out. And it's just all of the women waiting, holding close in the cold together. Nothing. They had to search only the men. Mama comes back onto the train with the other women, walking very dignified. She sits down next to me, not looking. I remember my trousers had been ripped near the knee. She put her hand to cover the hole. And I remember it because her hand was so cold on my leg, and we just sat in silence the rest of the way.

I am so sorry this happened to you.

On the way back to Bologna was worse. Why?

What happened?

Nothing. Nothing happened. It was the feeling of going back into the country with the question of what might happen next, feeling now in our bodies what could happen to us, wondering to ourselves to what country How are we coming back? How long can we really stay?

What country were they coming back to and how long could they stay. There were still so many gaps in my understanding of Julio's next moves, like how he got his family out and why my Nonno Franco was invited to join them. I had so many questions that could only be answered by the places and the people my family had left behind. It was time to make firm plans with the person who nudged me to start this whole thing in the first place. Well, there's more rechargeable batteries in the check bag. Good. The bright and beautiful woman who was ready to capture audio on the ground. Do you think to let us carry on the boom pool? It was time to go to Italy with Willa. Next time on Pack One Bag, Willa and I hit the ground running. We are walking to go and meet with the Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Draghi. In Rome, we dig into the other half of my grandparents' story, Nonno Franco, the Nobel Prize winner, whose family had a very different relationship with fascism. These are award certificates from the fascist party. Why did they have all this fascist stuff?

Pack One Bag is a production of live-action projects and gilded audio with sales and distribution by Lemonada Media. If there's someone you know who might like the show, please share episode one with them. Reviewing the show in your podcast app is the best way to help new listeners find us, even just taking a second to give us five stars. To be sure you don't miss an episode, follow or subscribe to this feed where you're listening right now. If you want to see the letter from Benito Mussolini or the confiscation of Julio's passport, please follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and X at PAC One Bag. To hear bonus audio from behind the scenes and to share your own stories and comments, please visit our website, paconebagshow. Com, where you can also find a tip jar to support the series. Our thanks to the many historians we interviewed whose work informs this episode, including David Kürzer, Mauro Canali, Vittore Armani, Analiza Capristo and Giorgio Fabre, and to Natalia Indrimi of Centro Primo Levi for connecting us. Special thanks to Lorenzo Mauri and his whole family for opening the archives of the Messageria Italiana, and to Luca Fomentone.

Pack One Bag is produced and written by me, David Modigliani. Production, audio engineering, and story development by Willa Kaufman. Lead producer, Nicki Stein. Producer, Eric Spiegelman. Executive producer and editor, Whitney Donaldson. Story editor and additional writing, Sam Dinhman. Executive producer and voice talent, Stanley Tucci. The show's original music is by David Garza. Sound design by Dan Rosato. Mixing, Mick Duhly. Additional Italian research and production, Sophie Eisenberg. Archival research and additional production, Dustin Brown, Olivia Cani, and Ben Chug. Graphic design and Art by Philip Hages. Digital strategy from Marissa Tom and Nate Jaffe. Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Executive producers for Lemonada Media, Jessica Cordova-Kramer, and Stephanie Wittelswax. Additional voice work in this episode by Yalmar Mitroti and Maria Rivoli as young Serena. Our show is made possible by the following: lead executive producer El Hefe, Jeff Steen, co-executive producers Andrew J. Viterbi, David Montague, Leanne Barons, Shoshana Ungerleider, Andrew and Lindsay Gill, Alex Halbert, Heather Halbert, and Dominic León, co-producers Diana Barrett and Ashley Pettus, and Linda and John Halbert. Associate producers, Justin Siegel, Guy Lancaster, Nikki McGrain, Leah Modigliani, and Arthur Yulian. Early development production by Rachel Eccland and Brian Ramos. Consulting, Rebecca Feferman.

We'll thank the many additional supporters of the show at the end of our series. Until then, my biggest and deepest thanks to the entire extended Modigliani family in the United States and in Italy, all of you, past and present. See you next time.